My shiny new Directivo is showing up today. I've read lots of threads and think I have a reasonably good idea of how it all works, but I'm not sure if there's any problems with the order that things are done. I want to hack to add a second hard drive and so I don't have to leave a phone line connected.

I figure I'll activate with DTV, back up the Tivo hard drive, then xtreme25, bash and touch. Should activation be done first or should I back up the drive first?

BTW, does the dish have to be in place to activate, or can it just be hooked to a phone line? I'm moving shortly, so I don't want to install the dish for a couple weeks, but I think the activation has to be done on my current phone for the dealer not to charge me.